Abstract

1. If it is true that ‘an ethic is the propositional reflection of the dispositions and attitudes, policies and stances, of people,’ as Simon Blackburn says in summary of the quasi-realism that he champions in this excellent and wonderfully provocative book, then it seems to follow that different dispositions, attitudes, policies and stances—different conative states, for short—will issue in different ethics, each with an equal claim to truth; and this in turn seems to be one thing that could be reasonably meant by that slippery polyseme ‘relativism’. If such relativism does follow, a good deal remains to be said about how much force it has. At the limit it might do no more than signal the abstract possibility of an ethic rivalling that of humans. More potently, it might somehow legitimize the different ethics of different groups of humans in actual conflict with one another. But without the possibility of some such variability of ethic to match a possible variability of conative state, the quasi-realist’s claim that an ethic ‘reflects’ a particular combination of conative states appears hollow.